Theophrastus Quotes

• True friends visit us in prosperity only when invited, but in adversity they come without invitation.

  Theophrastus

  Friendship, Best Friend, True Friend

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• Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.

  Theophrastus

  Inspirational, Basketball, Time

  Theophrastus (1904). “The characters of Theophrastus”

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• Waste of time is the most extravagant and costly of all expenses.

  Theophrastus

  Time, Waste, Expenses

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• Love is the affection of a mind that has nothing better to engage it.

  Theophrastus

  Love, Love Is, Mind

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• Beauty is a mute deception.

  Theophrastus

  Beauty, Deception, Mute

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• We must consider the distinctive characters and the general nature of plants from the point of view of their morphology , their behavior under external conditions, their mode of generation, and the whole course of their life.

  Theophrastus

  Nature, Character, Views

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• Remember that life holds out many pleasing deceits to us by the vanity of glory; for that when we are beginning to live, then we are dying. There is, therefore, nothing more profitless than ambition.

  Theophrastus

  Ambition, Vanity, Dying

  "The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers". Book by Diogenes Laërtius, transl. by C. D. Yonge, London: H. G. Bohn, p. 196, 1853.

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• If you are an ignorant man, you are acting wisely; but if you have had any education, you are behaving like a fool.

  Theophrastus

  Men, Ignorant, Acting

  "The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers". Book by Diogenes Laërtius, transl. by C. D. Yonge, London: H. G. Bohn, p. 196, 1853.

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• The sound of the flute will cure epilepsyand sciatic gout.

  Theophrastus

  Sound, Gout, Flutes

  Quoted in David Pickering Brewer'sTwentieth-Century Music (1994).

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• An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle.

  Theophrastus

  Horse, Judgment, Orators

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• Slovenliness is a lazy and beastly negligence of a man's own person, whereby he becomes so sordid as to be offensive to those about him.

  Theophrastus

  Men, Lazy, Sloth

  Jean de La Bruyère, Nicholas Rowe, Theophrastus (1713). “The characters, or, the manners of the present age”, p.41

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• I would define boastfulness to be the pretension to good which the boaster does not possess.

  Theophrastus

  Doe, Boasters, Pretension

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• Ah, yes, superstition: it would appear to be cowardice in face of the supernatural.

  Theophrastus

  Superstitions, Faces, Cowardice

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• Alcmaeon was the first to define the difference between man and animals, saying that man differs from the latter in the fact that he alone has the power of understanding.

  Theophrastus

  Men, Animal, Differences

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• Our costliest expenditure is time.

  Theophrastus

  Inspirational, Expenditures

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• One may define flattery as a base companionship which is most advantageous to the flatterer.

  Theophrastus

  May, Flattery, Companionship

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• The man of petty ambition if invited to dinner will be eager to be set next his host.

  Theophrastus

  Ambition, Men, Dinner

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• Anaximenes ... also says that the underlying nature is one and infinite ... but not undefined as Anaximander said but definite, for he identifies it as air; and it differs in its substantial nature by rarity and density. Being made finer it becomes fire; being made thicker it becomes wind, then cloud, then (when thickened still more) water, then earth, then stones; and the rest come into being from these.

  Theophrastus

  Science, Fire, Clouds

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• Superstition would seem to be simply cowardice in regard to the supernatural.

  Theophrastus

  Superstitions, Cowardice, Regard

  Theophrastus (1870). “Θεοφραστου Χαρακτηρες”, p.163

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